Aperture® 3 Portable Genius

Introduction

In many ways, Aperture needs no introduction. It's professional photo management done by Apple, the same folks who brought you iPhoto, iPhone, and more. We could lavish it with praise for the next few hundred pages and describe to you how happy we are with the photographic workflows we've developed with Aperture, but while that praise would be completely true (perhaps garnished with a touch of hyperbole to add some humor), that wouldn't leave much room to explain how Aperture can help your workflow. Instead, we'll simply say that Aperture has helped us optimize our digital workflows more than any other piece of software (and between the two of us, we've tried them all) so that we can quickly process thousands of images and spend more time shooting and less time at our computers.

When you first look at it, though, it's tough to understand how this neutral-gray window can do so much, and more importantly, what all these weird words like stacks and projects mean. Don't worry: we're here to help.

The next few hundred pages will take you through Aperture, from understanding the basic terms in Chapter 1 to advanced topics in Chapter 10. As you read, we encourage you to import some images and videos into your Aperture library and to try clicking the buttons we describe for yourself.

Don't feel obligated to read this book from start to finish, however. While we've tried to build the text so that the chapters follow roughly a digital workflow order and build on each other, feel ...